Staten Island's hidden hunger crisis

Aid agencies struggle as donations slip and the problem spreads to unlikely communities

JAN SOMMA-HAMMELShopping at Richmond Senior Services can be limited.

The face of hunger on Staten Island is changing.

It still peers out of the doorways in marginalized neighborhoods but can increasingly be found in zip codes associated with McMansions and SUVs.

Behind the faces are people who hold full-time jobs, parents in two-income households and senior citizens who worked their entire lives. Many of the faces belong to children.

Take the case of Verna Thommesen, 65.

Ms. Thommesen, who shares a rented house with two other women on the border between Grasmere and Concord, was a receptionist in the dorms of New York University from 1988 to 2002.

Carefree and unattached, she lived in Queens and was used to "just picking up and going." She lived down South for a while and visited Europe a few times.

Then cancer struck.

"It was an enjoyable life," she said. "I had my own apartment and I was able to travel from time to time. Then sickness comes out of the blue. You have the money and then suddenly you don't."

Today, Ms. Thommesen lives on a $997 monthly Social Security check. She spends $450 on rent and after paying costly medical bills, she is often left with less than $100 for food.

She is one of 64,000 Staten Islanders served by emergency food programs (EFPs) here -- a staggering 300 percent increase since 2004, according to Hunger Safety Net 2007, a report produced by the Food Bank for New York City.

Among the 24 percent of EFP participants who worked in 2007, 67 percent had full-time jobs, the Food Bank report said. Children under the age of 17 live in 52 percent of EFP households.

Data culled from 2005 showed 31,091 residents at-risk for hunger lived in the North Shore's Community Board 1, 15,204 in the Mid-Island's Community Board 2 and 10,189 in the South Shore's Community Board 3.

A record number of foreclosures, rising unemployment rates and bankruptcy filings, and higher gas and energy costs, along with a spike in prices in the supermarket aisles, have led to longer lines -- and emptier shelves -- at food pantries. 

In the last year, 70 percent of borough food pantries and soup kitchens ran out of food on average more than one out of every five operating days, and nearly 46 percent were forced to turn people away, the Food Bank survey showed.

"We don't always have milk," said Beverly Neuhaus of Richmond Senior Services, Port Richmond. "If we do get milk, it's two cases -- just 12 containers for a month's worth of people. That doesn't go very far."

Like their counterparts across the country, advocates here are banking on the passage of the $286 billion "farm bill," which could almost double federal money available to supplement a dwindling amount of surplus food purchased by the government. It would also bolster the Food Stamp program.

But competing House and Senate versions should have been melded into a single piece of legislation last year, leaving advocates restless as they hope for its passage.

"Every day they are late, it's less food in the system," said Aine Duggan, the Food Bank's vice president of government relations, policy and research. "We've never seen our warehouse so empty. On many days, the amount of food going out far outweighs the amount coming in."

Since 2004, the federal government has cut by 12 million pounds its allocations to New York City of cereal, peanut butter, juices, vegetables, rice, tuna and milk -- all longtime government-surplus staples, Ms. Duggan said. 

Individual donations are also on the decline.

"Private donations tend to be seasonal," said Joe Marotta, a volunteer at Our Lady of Good Counsel R.C. Church's pantry in Tompkinsville. "Once the holidays are over, those donations disappear but people are still waiting on line the Saturday after Thanksgiving looking for food."

The bottom line: Local food pantries have to do a lot more with a lot less, often rationing their food or scaling back their hours.

"People are lining up for food at increasing rates and we can't keep up," said the Rev. Terry Troia, executive director of Project Hospitality, who brought representatives from the Staten Island Hunger Task Force, the Staten Island Interfaith Coalition of Feeding Ministries, the Food Bank and the New York City Coalition Against Hunger to the Advance last week for an editorial board meeting.

One-by-one, pantry coordinators and volunteers told the same story.

Most distribute three days' worth of food to their customers, but only once a month -- which forces some participants to utilize multiple food pantries to feed their families, an extra hardship for those who work.

"Three meals a day for three days -- we know that's not sufficient for the whole month, but we don't have a sufficient food supply," said Ousmane Diallo, food pantry coordinator at Community Health Action in Port Richmond. "Sometimes, we go to the supermarket and purchase food to fill in the gaps."